NOT A BUSHMAN THING - WITCHCRAFT AMONG THE BUSHMEN AND HUNTER-GATHERERS

The practice of full-fledged witchcraft can be encountered in some hunting-gathering societies while in others it is completely absent. Yet others were evidently without witchcraft in traditional times but acquired patterns of witchcraft as a result of acculturative contact and conflict. In examining the social structure and ideology, as well as the history and development, of foraging societies with and without witchcraft practices, further light can be shed on the causes of witchcraft in human society. Two factors in particular, interpersonal conflict and cosmology, become elucidated by this comparative exercise: in order to generate witchcraft fears and accusations, conflict has to be of a certain intensity and quality while cosmology has to contain a certain element of existential anguish. While broadly comparative in perspective, the paper focuses on one particular group of hunter-gatherers, the Bushmen or San of southern Africa. They are a suitable illustrative case as some groups (such as the !Kung and /Gwi) have no patterns of witchcraft whatever, while others (such as the /Xam and Nharo) are beset with sorcerers and witches. The presence of this form of human-generated, mystical violence challenges, once again, the portrayal of this foraging group as "harmless people."